


looseleaf

by astrogeist



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Drabble Collection, Graphic Description, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:51:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeist/pseuds/astrogeist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Cecilos drabbles, for writing practice</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. “Do you…well…I mean…I could give you a massage?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil’s making his migraine face. It’s a face Carlos knows well for its peculiarity; the deep furrow of his brow, the tightening around his jaw, softened by the misty gleam in his eyes that he swears only contain the idea of tears, the understanding of physiological overreaction in the absence of danger.

Cecil’s making his migraine face. It’s a face Carlos knows well for its peculiarity; the deep furrow of his brow, the tightening around his jaw, softened by the misty gleam in his eyes that he swears only contain the idea of tears, the understanding of physiological overreaction in the absence of danger.

“Do you…well…I mean…I could give you a massage?” Carlos offers, because the ibuprofen hasn’t worked, and drinking water hasn’t worked, and he can’t just sit there and pretend nothing’s wrong.

“How would that help?” Cecil’s words are slurring in the aftermath of another trip to the bathroom, another round of heaving up what wasn’t there.

“It might not,” Carlos says, ever in the business of facts and uncomfortable truths, “but it might at least relax you enough to try and sleep.”

He interprets Cecil’s grunt as an agreement to try and coaxes him up into a sitting position, kneeling behind him on the pillows. Cecil puts all his weight into him, heavy and warm. It’s surprisingly intimate and sends his heart up into his throat for a moment, nostalgic nervousness of days gone by. His hands find Cecil’s shoulders, the junction at the curve of his neck, and he thinks about moving toward the pulse point underneath his jaw just to test if he feels it too. (Not that there’s any doubt, not really–it hasn’t been that long since he first went to test for radioactive material at the station, aware of how the back of his neck had prickled as his equipment went haywire in his hands, less aware of the host in the studio until he started making all-too-public declarations of love for him. It hasn’t been that long. But it’s been long enough to wonder.)

He is rational and he knows better than to think otherwise,  but he is intrigued (and triumphant) nonetheless to feel the tiny thrum beneath his fingertips as he positions his hands to rub Cecil’s temples in slow circles, a little fast. There is so much of Cecil in his thoughts and in his memories, and yet here, fitted against his chest, so much smaller than his presence conveys, here he is, all sinew and viscera and gentle pulsing, vulnerable and human.

Carlos pushes out the thought (or tries to) of him, pale and sterile against a reflective table, and he pushes out the thought (or tries to) of running a scalpel from throat to belly, watching him unfold in reverse-metamorphosis, veined red and glistening in unnatural ways. He stopped sleeping for a while after the clocks stopped working, and instead of nightmares he was left with these, split-second flashes that left him cold and confused and blinking as though to rid himself of the afterimages from a sun that would not set. As with all things in Night Vale, he eventually learned to adjust, learned to sleep and learned to live largely without fear in its most basic and primal form, learned that Cecil himself was not so frightening beyond his capacity to love and his capacity to know what there was to know as it happened so that he could spread the knowledge to others. He knows he would never actually hurt Cecil, would never  _want_ to hurt Cecil, but he remembers the clocks filled with sand and fights to believe there isn’t something more to the people in this town than simple organic matter.

If Cecil registers any of this, he does not stir; Carlos pulls himself back to Earth again, pauses out of instinct (and to know that he could) to splay his hand across Cecil’s forehead. No fever.

The mirror above the dresser is covered all but for the top-right corner, casting a beam of light over the headboard. Carlos leans in, lets his vision burn white.


	2. "Wanna bet?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil wasn't a big believer in magic.

Cecil wasn’t a big believer in magic. Sure, he had been, once; sometimes in his dreams, he visited a great hall packed with people, and he watched a man on stage make rabbits materialize out of a hat, or saw a person in half without leaving any entrails behind.  He would quiver in his seat (suddenly aware of his smallness in the world, not just as an entity in an ever-expanding universe, but also in stature, so much smaller than the man and the stage and his sister whose hand he was clutching and whose smile he would glimpse if he had the will to look away), not out of fear but in wonder. And then the man on stage would meet his eyes, beckon him wordlessly toward the white-hot lights and the unknown, to the stage where everything was bigger and brighter and inexplicable in a way that so much of the world was, and it was blinding to approach, but of course we are all so often unable to see tragic things as they happen.

He assumed that dream ended tragically, anyway, always awakening drenched in sweat, the ghost of his mother’s face mouthing “smoke and mirrors” burned on the back of his eyelids. He was long past the age of knowing better, but his sister’s face had been so clear, the presence of her hand so real—he yearned to know whether she had experienced it too, whether she had known it as magic or hooded figures, smoke and mirrors. He always forgot to ask.

Earlier that week, he had gone out to find Janice a gift for her eleventh birthday, wandering aimlessly through the aisles and trying not to think about feeling out of touch—with her, with his sister, with…well. And then he came to a shelf and he knew he had found Janice’s present without even having to think, at least until the next day when he called her up and nonchalantly asked about her if she believed in magic.

“Don’t be silly, Uncle Cecil,” she had said, so sweet and wise and heartbreaking. Of course. He hung up the phone when their conversation was finished and wept for a time without knowing why. Then, he went out and bought suitable dream journal materials, including a set of non-pens with glittery ink that she loved. His sister had smiled at him across the room. He did not ask about the dream.

He did not ask himself why he did not return the original gift, a “Magic 8-Ball” as the box proclaimed. He did not ask himself why he was holding it now, unboxed, between his sweating palms.

He did ask, as he had innumerable times already, “Will Carlos call me tonight?” He no longer had any reservations about asking out loud, convinced somehow that such might influence the outcome. With a little shake, the ball answered, as it had innumerable times already, “YES”.

They had been at this for over an hour, Cecil asking questions just to try and disprove what he knew (“Is the sky blue?” / “NOT TODAY”, “Are people allowed in the dog park?” / “ABSOLUTELY NOT”.) His timepiece, ticking away softly, displayed that it was nearly midnight.

“He’s not going to call,” Cecil murmured to an empty room. “I was a fool to believe.”

Through bleary eyes, he watched as the ball seemed to shake itself without moving, the old response disappearing and replaced by “WANNA BET?”

There was a buzzing on his bedside table.


End file.
